Thursday, March 27, 2008

Upjohn's country wooden church returns

St. Saviour's is being stripped down in preparation for preservation. That's right - I said preservation, not demolition. More on this soon. What can be said and seen right now is that Richard Upjohn's 1847 classic board- and-batten structure, that preservationists have long argued was under the shingles, has been revealed. You writing this down, Mary Beth Betts?

16 comments:

The LPC has long left Queens miredin the ineptitude and prejudice of the commissionwho have consistently snubbedmany of our landmark worthy sites.

"Altered beyond recognition" is the patent phrase that Bob Tierney and his gang have applied to summarily dismiss the request for evaluationthat was submitted for St. Saviour's churchas well as many other of our borough's well deserving sites.

LPC's closed door, back room dealingsmust be opened up to public scrutinyso that the sun can shine into their dark corners.

Hopefully, the Citizens Emergency Committee To Preserve Preservation's (CECPP) lawsuitwhich was filed on March 5th, willgo a long way to "persuade" the LPC(long co-opted by the Bloomberg administration), to put its cards on the table.

No more dealing off the bottom of the deck!

We want an honest game for ALL 5 boroughs!

No aces up the sleeve for the LPC's long prefered favorite.....Manhattan!

Queens has long been"a developers' paradise and landmarks stepchild",to quote former president of QHS Dr. Cogan.

What a beautiful building! With the siding stripped off, it probably looks much like it did when it was built.

The LPC's stance on this building is is stain on the reputation of every individual involved. Do Bob and Mary Beth realize they are endangering the very law itself with their transparently biased decisions?

Well I don't see the preservation community twisting their shorts over this like they did for 2 Columbus Circle. Their response has been lukewarm at best (remember the shameful efforts by the 4 borros telling us to 'compromise')

The fact of the matter is institutional discriminaton against the outer b's, and places of people of color or working classes, remain a significant part of the preservation landscape.

That, not the antics of the LPC, is the reason this church is in this condition. This building is standing only by the heroic efforts of JVCA.

Even if you move the chruch, it will lose a significant portion of its historic context. And by the time you spend money to move it, restore it, the millions spent could have been used to keep it in situ, where it belongs. It will lose so much of its historic value. Moving it to Lutheran Cemetery? Think about it.

Running programs in full view of funerals will be awkward, at best.

Also, by moving, it could perhaps 'save' the building, but we would lose the trigger to overturn the law, and start from scratch.

The building will be in an area near the street, and not near graves. It will also be in an area that is more accessible to public transportation than its current location. Most of the programs would probably be at night, when there are no funerals. And why would we care if there were funerals going on? The church held them inside its walls for 157 years. Furthermore, I would prefer to save the building than have to dig pieces of it out of a landfill.

Any moment, we can expect Parvizi the caterer and her invisible lackey, Manley the reporter to announce that it is due to their behind-the-scenes negotiations that brought about this preservation effort.

We can then expect Dizzy Lizzie to claim full credit when she goes door-to-door campaigning for city council.

Once the Jupiter Park Civic moves the church and retores it, I'd like to donate a plaque with the following inscription to affix on the front door.

"This church was saved by a small group of people who care about the community with no thanks whatsoever to the following indiviauls and organizations who either ignored or fought against the preservation efforts. These indiviauls are therefore not welcome in this building:

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